Girl With a Pencil in Her Hairs

If we were to believe Shastri-ji from Janmanas Co-operative Society, there would only be one man in the whole wide world─Shastri-ji himself. Everybody else is a 'character'. Take Mr. Subbarao from the third floor who happens to be the society chairman─who is an expert at finding ways of increasing society maintenance charges and has equal skills in digesting those funds without a burp or fart. To Shastri-ji, he is a swine. The 'always-overdressed-Mrs. Chandni' is 'Chhamak-Challo'. Grocery store owner Durgadas, who has always been a firm believer in the time-tested religion of adultery, is a dog─and not just any dog, but one that deserves a public execution. Gatekeeper Chandu Pandey from Chhapra who has an uncanny knack of vanishing off the face of earth at the first signs of trouble is a .... Well, I won't say it! And if such common men and women couldn't escape the measuring eyes of our Shastri-ji, then what chance do our politicians and traffic policemen stand? For their breed, Shastri-ji has names that he would only speak when he is with men of his age, or when he is alone.

Or when he is angry to extremes─which he often is.

But why blame him for that─such depth of observation has never blessed but men of extremely short tempers like our dear Shastri-ji. And anger has always been his faithful friend. It was there to throw away the bat, when in those forgotten days of childhood, he would be clean-bowled by a useless bowler. It was there when his wife committed the heinous crime of adding an extra pinch of salt in his daal. And it was there when Shastri-ji would rightly drive his scooter in the middle of a narrow road and some foolish young man of 'today' would honk his horn behind him. However, the only problem was that his old friend, Anger, needed a lot of space to live─in Shastri-ji's head. So anger took all the space there and… well, there went all his hairs, save the remains of that lush, black glory on the sides of his head that can neither be kept nor removed. Why shouldn't he be angrier? He should be! That's his right! After all what kind of God would allow a corrupt policeman to have a head full of hairs while an honest, peace-loving man like him went without that absolutely necessary asset of life? But there lay his other problem─God and he could never get along very well together. Then why should he expect any better off his wife of twenty-seven years (Mrs. Haldi-devi, or, Hitler), or even worse, his maid─a young fifteen year old girl whose least loved thing in the world was the work that paid for her mismatching, extra colorful bangles and oversized bindis.

By the way, the maid was named 'Heroine'.

So that fine day when Heroine was absent again and while Mrs. Hitler was busy complaining about the careless, pathetic maid─a sentiment that Shastri-ji shared─Shastri-ji did what every troubled 'man' would do under such grave circumstances – to take a walk. Through bazaars he walked; through roads full of smoke, cars and horns he crossed, and before he could realize, he was in the middle of narrow lanes surrounded by dirty, smelling shacks full of flies and people. 'Animals,' he muttered and sped up. Just when he was about to cross that hell of human excrement, he noticed something. Or someone.

There she was─Heroine.

Over a mid-sized boulder that seemed awkwardly misplaced, she sat. A touch of freshly wiped tears marking her stretched cheeks, and the disheveled madness of her dry, untied hairs spread all around her back. Someone screamed from the nearest shack─perhaps a drunk father! Heroine screamed back, burst into tears and ran across only to sit over another boulder that seemed to appear out of nowhere. From that distance, Shastri-ji saw her lips move in anger before her hands produced something─a piece of crumpled paper and two pencils. One of which she stuck in her hairs and with the other she lost herself in the wrinkled world of that little piece of paper that she seemed to treasure. Shastri-ji waited, watched. Minutes passed, perhaps hours. Around Heroine, screams died down and the ghetto moved at it’s own pace. All that changed in her was that smile─that honest tint of joy that only blesses a new born. With her pencil carefully traversing the crumpled paper and creating on it a world only she knew of, perhaps the troubles of her little, worthless life pulled out. A few other girls gathered round her, all of the same age. They tried to peek, they giggled, Heroine laughed, perhaps Shastri-ji saw a tint of shyness. Another moment and she was the same Heroine, lost in a world of her own with nothing to bother her. Shastri-ji looked at his watch.

Only a few minutes─and a careless girl morphed in front of his old eyes into a melancholy woman, into an angry recluse, into a frail human being, and back again to what he had always known her to be.

Shastri-ji walked away, wondering, thinking if the world could really be broken down in such narrow segments as he believed from time immemorial. Perhaps not, perhaps what he saw was only a garment clothed around the true spirit of life; of which a spirit had no ends. The hidden truth, perhaps it was always to be; only to be seen when he walked down the narrow, dirty lanes of secret lives. Perhaps the truth was that girl with a pencil stuck in her dry hairs, not that careless maid who didn’t do justice to her job. Yes, that was it! Shastri-ji knew, and then he never judged. And he started to smile. So much that for a few days, gatekeeper Chandu Pandey from Chhapra thought that our dear old Shastri-ji has been diagnosed of some cancer that often befalls our favorite heroes from Hindi blockbusters and after which they start to spread all the love and happiness around, make young women cry and want to marry their posters. Well, Chandu Pandey never got to know the reason, but Shastri-ji still smiles. His wife is not Hitler any more. Subbarao has ceased to be a swine.

Secretly, Mrs. Chandni is still a Chhamak-Challo.

Heroine is still a heroine for him. She would always be the girl who taught him not to judge. She would always be the girl with a pencil stuck in her dry hairs.