Who? - Chapter I

Chapter I - BB

Mika Singh’s exuberant nasal tones were now cross fading into Atif Aslam’s howls; but as the place was not a pub, whoever was responsible for the auditory conditioning of this massive supermarket, did not feel the need to change the lightning. Shamit felt like he was being subjected to those videos where people pour cold water on themselves. One sees the first person go Thada Thada Cool Cool; one thing leads to another and one has watched what feels like a few thousand wet nipples. At the end one feels as if not even a million litres of water could cure that dryness that made one click that first link. He licked his lips a little.

He thought of the butter chicken that landed him here today. Once more the wipers did their job and were immediately pulled inside like a performer bombing on stage is yanked off by the U of a cane.

“Where do you keep the Jojobera Oil Shampoo?” whined someone in the next aisle.

Shamit got on his toes and peered. A little boy was tugging at a uniformed young woman’s sleeve. He seemed around ten years but his eyes seemed a few decades ahead of everything else his body & face presented. Her eyes were hidden by an oversized orange cap, which was part of her uniform, announcing her master’s name which Shamit always read as ‘Bit Bizzare’.

She stopped filling up the racks with mouthwash bottles and gave the boy a smile which he did not return back.

‘Asshole’ screamed a mad man’s voice inside Shamit head.

As she was escorting him towards the aisle that had the much desired shampoo, Shamit felt like he was the wet glued lip of an envelope pressed to close but opened before drying and now strands of liquid glue were relentlessly tracking between their end points. Now the strands were disappearing and the glue was drying in the open air. He had to move and follow her but all he could manage was setting his toes at ease. Inertia had him pinned to the spot with its cold glacial fingers.

Shamit had stopped walking after the last cross fade to the unending howls currently flowing through the super market. Except for getting up on his toes and then down, he didn’t move a muscle. He stood at that exact spot between aisles of bodywash and handwash for three minutes seventeen seconds, when Atif Aslam’s love sickness hit a brick wall as an employee started declaring the lucky winners of the week’s lottery over the PA, which entitled the winner to a coupon which entitled you to a discount which made you buy more which made you apply for coupon and while he was explaining this Inception inspired consumption cycle; Shamit remained pinned.

Body Wash & Hand Wash. He remembered having encountered a light smell of lavender when he first came strolling down the aisle and although he was sure that the ghost of the pleasant lavender still whirled around him, his nose had become immune to it like the a Call of Duty fanatic becomes immune to the heads being blown off. That was Shamit’s world now for straight four minutes forty six seconds; scentless sense of unhealthy cleanliness. A primal instinct to slide into a pig pen, fight and disembowel one and scream a hoarse battle was raging in him now; but not a single nerve signal did move a single muscle in his body.

At first he was enchanted by the pristine white girl who lay on her knees surrounded by an orange fog pictured on the body wash boxes. Her privates covered with clever angling and foam. Shamit, in his trance which he will regret later, stared more at those boxes than the one on his right with a family of four and a magnified pair of hands, which he assumed belonged to one of them after they had wiped their respective behind, with very few of those wormy things that were supposed to represent germs. But ever since he pried on the conversation between the boy & young woman he was staring at the air in front of him with the invisible ghosts of lavender.

“And our fifth winner is…One Minute” and Atif Aslam was crying his intestines out for ten seconds before greeting the brick wall once again, “Eh Mike Chalu jhala….Shhhh ….. Amit, Mr. Amit. These are our lucky winner for the mega 50% discount coupon. We also have other extremely super exciting offers. Winners can collect the coupons from the counter.” Shamit expected the ballad to resume but there was complete silence on the PA.

The silence seemed like a command from the high heavens. He was still standing there except that his legs didn’t feel like they were bearing his body’s weight. For that moment in time he was confused of his own reality. It was like being submerged. He wanted to feel the water’s wetness but the cotton like water smothering him had stopped feeling wet. Tumbling down a deep unlit ocean, the moon like gravity rotating him, turning a slow descent into a flight back to a descent and so on indefinitely. And then he hit bottom.

He was now sitting on a high chair in a darkened room, his legs dangling. But before vertigo could catch hold of him he answered, “B - Bharat.” and he had finally picked the right option. Amitabh Bachchan, the Big B, as he always liked to call him, was jumping out of his seat, screaming out of his name, “Shamitji Aap Jeet Gaye Hain Aage Janeki Parmeesun.” Big B was clapping in his theatrical way alongwith the thunderous applause of the unseen Game Show audience surrounding him. Big B was reaching out for Shamit’s hand, violently shaking it; congratulating him on his brilliant journey till now. And then with a jerk he pulled him out of the hot seat.

And Shamit was rolling on. He was released from the prison of inertia and he pushed his small cart packed to the brim with things ranging from tomato sauce to underwear. Escaping the narrow aisle and entering the larger one, Shamit felt a shade relieved. He hurried forward looking for her. He was on his toes again, looking….

He didn’t catch her name tag. She seemed extremely small, that was all he had to recognize her. But the supermarkets seem to exclusively hire petite girls and they all wore the same loud, colourful baggy uniform and caps. Her face was fast fading from his memory.

“Shampoo…Shampoo…” a small whisper escaped his lips and he remembered.

Toothpastes…Mouth Wash…Face Wash…Health Soaps…Beauty Soaps…Gel Bars…Moisturisers… and finally… ‘SHAMPOOS’ proclaimed the aisle’s hanging display.

The young woman was standing next, to what he assumed was, the boy’s mother. Both women and the little boy held a shampoo bottle in each of their hands. They seemed to be engaged in an animated discussion, ‘One bottle to rule them all but which one indeed’. Shamit wanted to …What exactly?

Did he want to talk to her? Did he want to know what they wear under the uniform? Did he want a conversation over some tea? Did he want to tear apart that baggy uniform to caress her breasts and grab her ass which currently looked non-existing? Did he want to know her name? Did he want to lift her and give her a go around like she never had?

He stood there as the mother made her slow & unwitting choice to the boy’s impatient whine. It was the first time Shamit felt thankful for crying children. The young woman started towards him with her head down with apparent absent-mindedness but Shamit felt the attention of her peripheries.

“I want…I mean… I won.” he declared in an incrementally higher tone to the open space ahead of him. The young woman did not stop but slowed down. She lifted her head and furrowed. Shamit continued behind her wherever she was going.

He finally saw her closely without body wash boxes between them. As far as conventional beauty is concerned she would get a two out of ten from the most generous of judges, Shamit thought. Her eyes were about the only saving grace. ‘A pair of full black moons in white skies’ he thought. They dominated her features. Everything else felt like it was zapped by some magical shrinking machine. Her cheekbones stuck out, her forehead more pronounced from the pulled back hair and bright orange cap. Her skin was patchy and not exactly dark but mostly the kind of shade they show in those skin whitening commercials. A shade you could swear was not real but some half-hearted effect to make a milk white model look like the ‘before girl’. The uniform hung on her shoulders like a tent leaving the usual womanly curves a mystery.

Suddenly, an image of Olive Oyl came to his mind. He felt the urgent need for a Spinach Can and before he knew it, the theme song started in his head.

TA..TANA.TATATA… TA..TANA.TATATA… TA..TANA.TATA.. TA..TANA.TATA.. TA..TANA.TATATAAA…

He imagined Popeye blowing hard on his pipe and making it sound like a steam engine. As the silence had broken his Inertia, few minutes ago, the slightly rhyming invitation to an unreasonably never ending party by Yo Yo Honey Singh, broke their trance. They stopped walking in their lost lock step style and resumed their conversation.

“Want?” Her voice sounding a little hoarse. She cleared her throat.

“Won! I won the..Yes… the coupon. The one they announced.”

“Oh you did? Wow that gives you 50% discount on” and her words started to come slower with each second “all products in the store except clothes and plastic items for a month.”

“Why clothes and plastic items? That’s so random.”

She just smiled, threw up her shoulders and said, “Do you want me to take you to the counter?”

Shamit guessed that he had somehow managed to nod his head because he was following her somewhere and she did not seem to mind. Pushing his full cart, he had become her Vodafone pug except that his tongue was firmly within his slightly grinning mouth. He knew that because he made a mental check of it every other minute. From an early age he had the habit of bringing his tongue out and about as if get a taste of current mood. His tongue’s outings had been quite expensive in many social meets & greets over the years and he had no intention of paying anymore. So like a Disney Princess his tongue was banished to be trapped inside the fortress of his mouth and like her it will climb out eventually.

It occurred to Shamit that she too seemed a little lost, she kept taking turns that didn’t lead anywhere and then took U-Turns. Out came a hint of tongue already. She looked amused by the attention of his uninterrupted gaze.

They finally came to an open area without any aisle or products, just people lined up before innumerable checkout counters. There was a lot of inaudible noise from general chit chat over and above the excessively audible Yo Yo Honey Singh.

“Whats your mobile number?” she started suddenly without turning.

“My..What?”

“Cell number for verification….the coupon.”

“Oh.. let me check. I just got a new one. Umm….”

She noted it down on a pocket book that appeared out of nowhere in her hand and turned to open a white door which again appeared out of nowhere.

During his wait, scored by Yo Yo Honey Singh’s song crossfading into a very popular song from Aashaqui 2, he remembered that he had forgotten to have a glance at the nametag. ‘Aashiqui Two!’ laughed Shamit, as an amusing quote from a review he had read occurred to him, ‘An eternal love story so unique, that they had to put a two next to it.’

As the increasingly asinine lyrics of the song were washing over him, his mind wandered back to her. The more he thought of her image in his head, the more he was convinced that she was closer to thirty than twenty but her demeanour screamed ‘Girl’. He was now blinking at the body wash box in his cart and regretfully observed that he had forgotten to get the handwash but rejected going to back in the jungle.

“Whats your name? Sir?” A recently familiar squeak came from behind him. But before answering the question, began the search for the nametag. She was a foot or two shorter, the nametag flopped over on her left side, weighing down the surrounding part of her tent, making it virtually impossible to be read except by lying flat on the floor.

It was impossible he thought and said “Shamit.”

Checking a list in her hand she chirped, “No.”

“I didn’t win?”

“No. The list doesn’t have your name or number.”

“But you do.” Began Shamit getting more comfortable in his ‘Player’ mode and added “Maybe I can get a missed call.” She pulled her cap downwards but not before he caught a slight upwards swing of her cheeks.

A song from Munnabhai MBBS where Sanjay Dutt croaks ‘Baap…. Hassi Toh Fassi’ kept ringing in his head till about the time he had parked the car in his bungalow’s garage. He got around back to haul his purchase inside.

“Ahhhh….Fuck”, he breathed, as he lifted both of the gigantic bags in an air of exuberance. Unknowingly, he now began to hum the song but with the weight of two bags the humming in deeper tones sounded more like a requiem than a cheerful song about a girl who lacks the capacity to simply say, “Yes!”

Manoeuvring the garage door, he entered his home. A laughter track was playing on TV interrupted by few seconds of inaudible punchlines. He caught a glimpse of his wife and son laid on the sofa, enjoying their Sunday afternoon. He was a few steps away from the kitchen table when he sensed his cellphone quiver.

‘Fassi.’

The tinkling in his balls went away when he found that it was just a marketing message from a Hair Expert. He went drunk on a cocktail of anxiety, excitement and boredom over the course of next five hours. Not a minute passed without checking his phone while, the three unpacked the purchase (she commented on lack of handwash); they had a family dinner; he played a couple of multiplayer rounds of Call of Duty with his son; his wife narrated her brother’s latest theatrics to keep her father’s entire property to himself and that tirade fading into the latest breaking news and then fading into…. Not a minute.

It wasn’t a missed call at the end, she messaged him her name. After the Sunday spent in a slow flashback of all memories remembered, rehashed and some entirely concocted for present purposes, his life flickering before him, he was almost waiting for hot slam of a truck hitting him and throwing him legions away.

So he went for a stroll in the warm & humid evening. He made it till the crowded corner of the Chatwala. After hollering his order he went straight to the message. It was just a name nothing else. No ‘Hi’. No ‘Regards’. No ‘Fuck off you pathetic middle aged man.’ Just a name.

He mechanically went ahead to save the contact and the mental brakes slammed down. The cursor blinked over the box titled - Name.

BB, he entered, after much contemplation and the usual high ‘Pingggg’ of Save issued. He stared at it. In his palm, it felt like a piece of alien technology. There was newness to it, it was shiny, smooth, strange and with no hint of any obvious purpose. The constantly blinking lights of his racing thoughts left blind spots on his physical vision and he thought

‘What if it was dropped onto my lap so that I could be lured into an anal probe?’

The analogy was getting difficult to follow because he started to think of an actual anal probe performed by the girl. Shamit began thinking how jittery one SMS made him and how he couldn’t possibly put it in action, not to mention his vows of fidelity.

The Bhelpuri dish was thrust into his hands. Finishing up the paltry semi moist dish, he tried wiping his hands clean. But they still remained sticky. He walked back home while rubbing his finger together, licking them occasionally but it wouldn’t work.

With the new diet regime, he couldn’t have cart along Bhelpuri smell any longer. Keeping an eye out for his better half and their Halfling he zeroed in on the washbasin near the kitchen. But when he got there, he remembered exactly a second before he was going to use it – the empty handwash bottle.

It almost felt like a mathematical algorithm; the past, present and future just pieces of carefully & calculatedly placed domino. His wife. And her diet regime. And the regime that gave her an excuse to lord over him. And having to go to the mall as punishment for eating that Butter Chicken on a business dinner. And being bewildered in the supermarket. And the bewilderment leading to spotting the girl. And the girl making him forget to get handwash. And without handwash, the betrayal will come out yet again. And he will have to go to the supermarket yet again. And he will inevitably meet the girl. And she will inevitably take it as a followup and ….

His unconscious mind always a few steps ahead in formulating & rearranging to make him feel being pushed into a corner comfortably titled ‘Adultery’.

‘Why don’t we just have a big bar of soap here.’ he thought, almost half wet with the multiple splashing, ‘Just cut out all the bullshit. That’s what it was. Fuckin’ Tooty Fruity hand wash bullshit. I’ll just take a bath. I bought the goddamn body wash, didn’t I?’

He ran and stepped into the bath. Hands on his and the water’s handle. The first drops of water in the bucket started with the high tones of a cymbal ‘Nothing matters…I love her… I adore that amazon jungle...…’ and then with a little puddle forming in the bucket, the sound turned hollower ‘…...And that mouth... I like to slurp on those lips and bite on those earlobes...…’ and finally the bucket was overflowing, a sound with machine gun like quality masking all else, ‘…... No worries... It'll all work out… You'll see... In the end, it's all nice.…’

But all throughout, he couldn’t guess who he was imagining.