On the chilly morning of the eighteenth of November, akin to the dry and smoky morning of the month before that, and all the scorching ones preceding these months, Armaan Ji jogged to the metro station through the by-lanes of our local market.
I have seen her every morning since she was a school-going-teenaged Armaan, and I was Baby Chhotu. Yes, that does sound strange and ironical, but that is me. I am strange and ironical and a mammoth misfit behind the counter of Aggarwal Groceries. Before I become Chetan Aggarwal at school, I have to do my shift at the family business place. You get the drift.
There is one thing, on the said morning that I, try as I might, could not understand. Armaan Ji, I didn't have the heart to call her Didi, had a beautiful name. And while I called her exactly that when she bought her morning tetra-pack of chocolate milk from my store every now and then, in this monologue I will do no such thing.
So, yes, as I was saying, on the morning of the eighteenth, some men who sit around my brother and father like flies sit around garbage sat them down for another session of cards. Yes, cards in the morning with Mohabbat Hai Mirchi on the stereo. And each and every one of the flies, the garbage included, laid their cards to rest to look at Armaan Ji as she walked by our shop. Heads turned when Armaan Ji walked by, wait, heads turned when anyone with breasts walked by. So, that was fathomable. However, the following conversation was not.
"Aaj kitne khule the?"
"Ab hum ginne mein busy ho jayenge toh point kya hai, bhaiyya?"
Lecherous laughter ensued.
"Humein lagta hai do hi the,"
"Arey naaahi, do se itna kamaal view nahi milta,"
"Arey shirt-shirt pe depend karta hai, bhai, tumko nahi pata."
"Tumhe bada pata hai?"
Lecherous laughter continued.
I made my way from behind the corner to inside the trashcan. For, once it dawned on me what they were discussing, I was taken over by a fury that I had not encountered before. But as it turned out that morning, I should have, every single time.
"What the hell is you lot's problem? Can't you stop being filthy? Is it so hard to not be filthy for a change?" I burst out.
Most laughed and said nothing. King Kachra, as I secretly call my father, however, is a very brave man.
"Ye sahib button-khuli madam ke aashiq hain, sab chup ho jao."
That morning, my friends, I slapped my father harder than he's ever slapped any of us. Not me, my brother or mother - I am slap champion now, and I'm the better for it. For, he could do nothing. He was surrounded by his kind and his kind knew he was humiliated. His game, for the time being, his tyranny, and his perversion, had him isolated.
The button-khuli madam infamy spread like smog over our neighborhood. All the zip-khule-bhaiyyas and multiple-husband-aunties were talking about the Resident Welfare Association head's daughter and her disinterest in buttoning her shirt.
I couldn't slap everyone. I couldn't claim that I hadn't ever looked down her shirt. Father-proclaimed loverboy as I am, I used to play badminton with her siblings as kids. I was then her housemaid's son. And since then, I have looked up, down, left, right - everywhere I couldn't help but look.
My excuse is that I've never looked at her with the dirt in my eyes which since that morning, I have been seeing in a lot of eyes. Not just for her, not just by men, but by all those who think they can talk like this about a human being.
That night, my mother did not cry herself to sleep because my father didn't lay a finger on her. That night in my before-bed prayers, I thanked god for not giving me a sister and for not letting my father and other garbage get to me like they have infiltrated my brother already.
And on the morning of nineteenth of November, nobody counted the number of buttons that Armaan Ji chose to leave open in her dress. Strangely that morning though, she was accompanied by her mother and guess what their whispered conversation was as her mother bought milk on the side? Buttons!
As if I wasn't already mad for her, her not buttoning her shirt made me a fan for life, and I mean this in the most not-dirty way possible. I swear.
And I wondered why the buttons are such a hot topic around here? And I wondered why no one else wonders.
Fast forward some weeks, months, seasons et cetera - I have not noticed any change in her clothing. I have not seen a reduction in the dirt inside people's eyes either.
But I swear sometimes she smiles at me, and her smile, unfortunately symbolizes 'you're cute, not a leech, but find someone your age.'
If they've made more like her, I might as well hope the same.
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