Skip to main content

Condom Mechanics



Short Story

The condom failed them.  Aisha became pregnant.

“Oh, fuck!” was Anand’s spontaneous reaction.  He didn’t mean it to be vulgar, Aisha knew.  Boys and girls in the college used the word with a vast array of meanings and meaninglessness.  It was the most popular word on the campus as it encapsulated a kaleidoscopic range of meanings and feelings.  The word also referred to the most popular pastime on the campus.  Aisha wondered whether it was after a visit to their campus that Bill and Melinda Gates decided to offer a $1 million-funding to anyone who can produce the “next generation condom” which would make the popular pastime as pleasurable as if there were no condom.  And foolproof too, hoped Aisha.  Not like the one that had ditched her.  

“No tension,” said Anand with such a bindaas attitude that for a moment Aisha thought he was an ambassador of Manappuram gold loan.  “There are gynaecologists who will fuck any pregnancy just like that for a few gandhis.”  He snapped his fingers.

‘Gandhi’ was the campus slang for a five hundred-rupee note.

“I’m afraid,” Aisha heard herself muttering.  Will it be painful?  That’s what she was primarily afraid of.  Pain is not something she was familiar with.  There was no luxury in the world that her father, Hameed, could not buy her without touching the black money he had stashed away in some Swiss banks.  Hameed would not allow pain to come anywhere in her neighbourhood.

Hameed had come to the city as a young man possessing nothing more than an extra pair of clothes and high school education.  He started as a daily wage labourer in a construction company.  Today his own construction company is worth a few hundred crores of rupees.  A few cases of cheating were filed against him by some people who were his clients.  But such cases mean nothing in this country when you’ve acquired a certain stature – economically or politically.

“There’s nothing to fear,” said Anand rather contemptuously.  As a Rajput he was very proud of the bravery that his ancestors had bequeathed him.  He boasted quite often that the history of his family could be traced back to Paramara who restored the stolen kamadhenu to its owner, Vashisht maharshi.  It’s funny, mused Aisha, that the cow was stolen by another maharshi, Vishvamitra.  We do have a very motivating heritage.  No wonder Anand’s father is a successful politician of a national party that takes much pride in the nation’s cultural heritage which is presumed by his party to be under constant threat from Islamic Pakistan.  Mr Karan Parmar, Anand’s father, would never accept a Muslim girl for a daughter-in-law.  His Rajput ancestry would condemn it as  treason to have his son marry a Muslim girl.  A Khap Panchayat would be summoned and the greyest-haired or baldest-headed khap leader would pronounce the verdict, his breath reeking of hate: “Death to the offenders.”  Mr Parmar’s black money that has not made its way to a Swiss bank yet will buy the life of his son from the khap warriors.  Justice is a blindfolded lady. 

But who wants to marry Anand, now?  Aisha chuckled.  She had never imagined herself as Anand’s wife.  Whatever happened between them was a natural part of the mechanics of enjoyment that prevailed on the campus.  Bill Gates, the Imam of Generation Next, had understood it and hence sought to replace quantum mechanics with condom mechanics on the campus.  May Allah bless him!

But Allah’s ways are not easy to understand.   Otherwise how would Hameed, the lord of construction mafias, come to know about her pregnancy so soon?  He fretted and fumed while his wife stood with a marmoreal demeanour.  Having concealed her face behind the religious veil for years, Aisha’s mother had lost her emotions or had come to think it was no use revealing them since nobody would see through the veil anyway.

“Go and play this on your laptop,” said father flinging a CD at her.  “This is selling like hot biryani in Palika Bazar.”

Her heart stopped beating when her laptop brought the CD alive.  What she saw was one of her pastime scenes with Anand, though Anand’s face was never seen in the video.

She pressed Anand’s mobile phone number.  “Dhoom machale,” said the dial tone before it was cut off.  “The person you are trying to contact is out of range or not available now,” said a mechanical voice. 

She dialled the number again.  The phone was now switched off.

When she reached college the next day she learnt that Anand had gone to join an MBA course in the land of Bill Gates, the Lord of Generation Next.

Comments

  1. At the end of the day we have educated illiterates. People bought degrees for people who are worse than illiterates.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's the best of times and the worst of times, said Dickens in Hard Times....!

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Vishal, I have taken the scene beyond the present.

      Delete
  3. Honestly, I do not understand. My bad,of course.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's just like me avoiding scientific writing saying "I do not understand". A former student of mine who is now in university remarked on Facebook that I was generalising about the present generation. He understood the story from that angle. A journalist friend rang yesterday to say that my story has no emotion and is too intellectual. He also understood the story, however. What can I suggest to you, Raghuram?

      Delete
  4. Sad but more common than ever in the present times.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The way the the communal and personal feelings get intertwined while narrating brings the story to life. I had a great time reading this post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for saying that you enjoyed going through the story. I didn't think of it as a communal problem. Communal problems are created by idiots like the Khap Panchayat oldies. I'm worried about the young generation.

      Delete
  6. Wow, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story, you use such a powerful and effective language.. I loved how you described Hameed's wife hiding her emotions under the veil!

    Good Luck, looks like a successful blog!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for telling me something precisely (which very few commentators do).

      Delete
  7. another interesting piece...
    A story one keeps hearing of nowadays, atleast in B schools...

    Your choice of expressions is brilliant Sir !

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser