A Heart of Gold

It is an open secret that during the time when the dance bars were banned in Mumbai, they were not in fact, shut off. Quite a few continued functioning unhindered, albeit covertly. It was in one of these bars that Qashif fell for the dove-eyed, wheat-skinned, slightly overweight and hopefully adult Hema about a year back.

He happened to see her shake and thrust out of beat one night and could not take his proverbial eyes off her. He reacted to the situation like most other Indian men would; visiting the bar every night, asking for her private services daily and generally stalking her to the extent a bar girl could be stalked to the point of botheration. 

His advances failed to win him any favors initially but on the suggestion of friends, he turned on his charm and won her heart. Whether it was his personality or the the gold chain that he gifted her did the trick is still debatable. She was innocent but certainly not lacking in common sense. However, it did get her to agree that he be her only customer from now on. 

Hema of course, was joyful. Gone were the days when she would hope to find a patron for the night and sometimes danced herself to a sweat for paltry sums of money. All this had begun to change. She would sluggishly move around the stage until Qashif appeared and then go up to his table to sit with him while he had one peg after another. She now received the full night charges every day and sometimes, if he was feeling particularly generous, jewelry items, usually, solid gold.

Hema was particularly elated when she opened her eyes today. At first she could not recall the reason for her lifted spirits, but as soon as soon as the pain in the neck kicked in, she remembered. Qashif had promised to marry her and had even gifted her a gold necklace with diamonds in it in the shape of a heart. Even her untrained eyes could tell that it was expensive beyond any sum of money she had ever heard of. She admired it so much that she went to sleep wearing it.

As she lazily tossed around her bed, rewinding her whirlwind affair and imagining an exciting elopement, someone knocked on the door. She cursed the darned chaiwala for breaking her chain of romantic thoughts as she got up and opened the door, making sure that she had hid the necklace first. What she saw was not the chaiwala but a fat, sari-clad woman of about thirty five years of age carrying an unclad baby in her arms and an adolescent girl by her side who was wearing rags for clothes and had not had a bath in a week at least. The woman's face looked heavy and ghastly due to red, swollen eyes and puffed cheeks; the kind you get from crying for a long period.

She had not even registered the faces properly when a sound of agony and despair emerged from the fat woman. Her throat was hoarse from all the weeping and she had to gasp for air intermittently but she kept speaking. After a few attempts, Hema understood that she was inquiring if her name was Hema. When she answered in the affirmative, the woman quickly handed the baby over to the girl and moved towards Hema threateningly with raised arms but collapsed on the floor before she could actually land on Hema the punch that she had begun. The children, meanwhile, had started wailing seeing their mother on the ground.

Not knowing what to do, she set about restoring silence by patting the children and offering them water first and then moved the woman inside and closed the door lest her neighbours saw the tamasha. Sprinkling water didn't help so she pushed a dirty sock near the woman's nose to revive her. This did the trik and the woman finally came to, much calmer now thanks to exhaustion. She asked Hema if she could have some water and if she would be kind enough to speak to her for some time. 

After gulping down two glasses of water, she began, softly at first but sorrow and anger building up as she went along. She told Hema that she was the children's mother and Qashif was their father. Everything was going along well in their lives; a loving couple, two healthy children, a well-paying job, a pet dog and the occasional scotch for Qashif. It all changed the fateful day when Qashif visited the dance bar to celebrate the birth of their boy. Qashif himself would never do such a thing on his own but his friends talked him in to it. But once he saw Hema, he was never the same again. He was no longer a husband, a father or an employee but only a man who was in passionate love and wanted to have his object of desire. Going through the familiar spiral of drying off bank balance, losing the job, selling everything and finally borrowing money to keep Hema happy, Qashif's family was now homeless and did not even have money to feed the children.

By the time the woman reached the story's end, her voice had grown hysterical and she dropped on Hema's feet and begged her to free Qashif from her charms. Hema crouched down and requested her to stop crying and give her five minutes to return. Once the woman let her go, Hema darted straight to her bedroom. Rummaging through her clothes, for what seemed like eternity, she reappeared with a bag in her hand. And she said to the woman, "I can't take back the agony that you have suffered. But I can ensure that I do not cause you any further trouble. In this bag is every gift that he has ever given me and I think they all belong to you. I have also put in some savings to help you start again. I will also tell Qashif to go home and look after his family in stead of chasing me. Please forgive me for my sins."

The woman was about to drop to her feet again but Hema, now accustomed to this, caught her midway and hugged her. Between sobs, she thanked Hema profusely and compared her to divine beings as she left the house with the children in tow. As soon as she left, Hema called up Qashif and told her his wife had visited her. Qashif asked in apparent amazement, "Wife? What wife darling?"