Chapter 5: Corruption

Oh shit. Oh no. Uh Oh!
Right then Anita’s parents walked in, fashionably late as usual.
“Azad, beta!” My mother-in-law flashed me with the brightest, fakest smile in her arsenal. “Oh beta, you must be overjoyed.”
I smiled back meekly. Her husband didn’t say much as he stood behind her and sniffed the hospital corridor.
“Where is she? Where is the baby?” She asked with revolting enthusiasm.
I pointed towards the room, nodded a greeting at my father-in-law, and walked away in the other direction.
Oh shit. Oh no. Uh Oh! Am I ready? Oh shit.
I can’t be a father. I’m barely a husband. I can hardly take care of myself. There’s Sahni. And I have to worry about the gangsters. Oh, I have a family. My life is going to get completely displaced and deracinated. My own family. Oh, no.
I wandered around silently amongst the noise and chaos around me. The white corridors of the hospital had the nauseating habit of being equally as torturous as they were calming.
I left the maternal section and walked into another building in the same campus, where the normal sick and dying people dwelled. The several buildings together made a massive mega-hospital in the university. I could walk around seeing people die and give birth all day.
With each passing moment, the reality of it began to set in on me. You can never be perfectly ready for this day, no matter how many years you spend mentally prepare yourself. This is the day that you become a father. The day that the child in a man’s shoes has to raise his own child.
Your families never fail to remind you. Oh, Azad, you’ll understand blah blah when you have kids of your own. Oh, Azad, are you going to send your children to a boarding school too? We should take care of the environment, they told us; we have to give our children a better future.
It only gets worse after marriage. Oh, so when is Anita becoming a mother? Hey, is something wrong Azad, my friends ask with a wink. You’ll have such tall kids, you two.
And if you manage to fuck up while fucking, you might see this day earlier than expected.
And then she finally gets pregnant. That’s when all hell breaks loose. Somewhere between your wife being bitchier than usual and your house being converted into a fucking kindergarten, the realization of the upcoming new human being in your life tends to get lost. Oh, the baby’s going to have Anita’s eyes for sure, her friends say. What are we going to call him if it’s a boy?
It was all overwhelming and it was all scary, and it was all overbearing and all new.
But when Niyati was born, I felt a strange sense of complacency and completeness when I first laid eyes on her. And I couldn’t help thinking of all the different decisions, combinations, or permutations that could’ve happened in my life to deny her existence. But here she was. Alive, healthy, and mine. She exists because of me.
And the mother, of course.
I turned a corner to face another corridor of countless offices, a window on each to give a small glimpse of countless more patients sitting with their doctors. There are so many lives, I thought. So much else going on outside of my understanding. I walked through that corridor, consciously shunning away my already troubled mind from sniffing in any more insanity with all that else.
But the corner of my eyes caught someone through the window of one of these rooms. My brain couldn’t believe it at first, but finally agreed with my peripherals and decided to respond. I turned to take a second, confirming look.
What the heck is he doing here?
It was Sahni – sitting inside and intently talking to a doctor. He looked delightfully concerned.
My next reaction was fear. Has he been following me? Does he always know where I am?
No, that couldn’t be it. This is a hospital. Maybe he’s just sick. Or dying. The latter, hopefully. A nurse brushed passed me and I suddenly remembered that it was considered rude to be staring into someone else’s business.
But this is Sahni we’re talking about here. He stares into others’ businesses for a living.
I foolishly decided to listen to my conscience and walked away. Hearing screams of pain down the corridor, I looked up to realize that I was in the Department of Dentistry.
So Sahni has bad teeth, then? Nice… Every bit of information against your mortal enemy counts.
A few steps down, I saw another man rush down past me. He didn’t notice me, but looked familiar enough that my eyes followed his desperate rush down the corridor. And then I remembered: he was my competition and the owner of another local movie and news channel: Channel 19.
I was beginning to think that bad teeth are a prerequisite for mortal enmity with me.
What was his name again? I tapped my feet and scratched my hair. I rubbed my prickly cheeks and leaned against the walls. I began to follow him.
What was his name again? Subhash… Suresh… Sandeep… Something? I mean, it was just Channel 19. How am I expected to know more about him and his shitty little channel? The corridor suddenly got busy as he began to disappear in the crowd. I had to stand on my toes to keep him within sight.
He turned right and knocked on a door before quickly letting himself in. I chased Something-19 to that door, awkwardly moving as fast as I could without giving the impression of running.
The room, by another fateful and incongruous coincidence, happened to be the same office as the one Sahni was in. Coincidence?
What wasn’t coincidental at all was the fact that I began to spy on this strange meeting of a dentist, a TV censor, and Something Channel-19 via the small glass window on the door. There must be either something truly fishy on about, or there are a whole lot of movies with objectionably bad teeth being shown on Channel-19.
I couldn’t hear them too well; the chaos in the corridor around me assured that. It was oddly safe to be able so spy on them though, because the cavalcade of people around me was too busy, too sad, or too scared to worry about strange spies.
The dentist stood up and moved to the back of the room as Sahni and Something-19 chatted about something or the other. I checked the nameplate on the door – Dr. Natarajan Swaminatha Gunasekaran.
That’s a long name for someone with a dental problem to go and explain that they were looking for Dr. Gunasswhatever.
And just as I was losing my patience, Something-19 reached into his pocket and took out a small bundle wrapped in yellow polythene. Oooh – the plot thickens – I hope.
Sahni immediately turned to look in my direction. I ducked at the speed of light.
Did he see me? I crawled away from the door and put my head back up. I could still see inside the room quite clearly.
Sahni opened the yellow polythene bag and out came three or four thick bundles of money. They were the large ones, either 500s or 1000s. Sahni checked the money and then shook Something-19’s hand as he nodded his head in appreciation. Something-19 whispered in Sahni’s ear, as the censor laughed and quickly wrapped the money back inside the polythene bag.
I took a couple more careful steps backwards. So this is how Channel 19 gets away with it…
“Excuse me,” I saw a middle-aged nurse approach me, “Are you quite alright?”
“Quite.” I answered, and continued to walk backwards to avoid further confrontation. Maybe she’ll think I’m mentally disabled and leave me alone.
She didn’t.
“I’m sorry sir, but I think you need a doctor.”
“No, no, I am sorry,” I replied congenially, “But it would be better if you minded your own business.”
But she wasn’t the cooperative type, so she reached over and grabbed my shoulders. I tried to shrug her off. Her armpit odours soon followed, soon welcoming themselves into my nostrils.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take you to your doctor, sir…”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to break your chin if you don’t let me go.”
She let me go.
“Don’t threaten me sir,” she threatened, “I must take you to your doctor.”
“No, no, I’m not a patient. I’m just left-handed.” I said and walked backwards some more.
“Please come with me, sir,” she took a few steps closer again.
“I’m not a patient, I’m a father!”
Dr. Swamivandena Gunasswhatever’s door opened and out stepped Something-19. He was already looking in the opposite direction and was too busy being inconspicuous to notice me or my current struggles.
I knew that the next figure to step out would probably be Sahni, so I turned around and dashed back up the way I came.
“Sir, stop, stop!” said the nurse as she madly pranced behind me.
“I’m not a patient,” I shouted back, “I’m a father! I’M A FATHER!”

I’m a father. Sahni is corrupt.
Noted.
When I had finally given the sweaty nurse a slip, I found my way back to my wife, my parents, and my daughter. My daughter!
“Hold her, hold her,” encouraged the audience around me. Deepu Chachu had made it too, looking more enthusiastic than I’d ever seen him before.
I held my newborn daughter. And amongst the panic of the day, the screams of my wife, the hustle-bustle at the hospital, the annoying pats on the back by my mother-in-law, realizing that Sahni is corrupt and being chased by a nurse’s armpit, I remembered that I had to provide for another living being.
Shit.

Babies should know how to sleep better.
I mean, it’s true that babies learn most things really quickly, but they don’t master the art of a good night’s slumber quick enough. I should write a memo to God, reminding him to make sure that future children are born with the innate ability of matching their body clock to that of their parents.
Niyati’s cries woke us up again. “Your turn,” Anita said and turned away.
I tried to remember. “No,” I got up, “I went the last time… Anita, I went last time. It’s your turn.”
She was already snoring.
Niyati cried some more. I cursed under my breath and got out of bed, slowly sleepwalking towards her crib. My knee bumped into something in the dark and I cursed again.
How the hell did I get myself into this? I got to Niyati and shushed her. She smiled back up at me as I began to rock the crib.
“You should thank the mafia for your existence, my dear,” I whispered. Oh, if it wasn’t for all that paranoia and fear Anita poked into my head that one night. Maybe then we could have waited longer before having you.
The baby seemed to have read my mind and began to cry again.
“Shushssss,” I said, “No, no, I don’t hate you for existing.” I rocked the crib some more, but that didn’t stop her ever-loudening wails.
Anita’s snores broke with a buzzing sneeze, like the sound of a bee as it getting sucked into a black hole. “What have you done?” she kvetched.
“Nothing, I didn’t do anything – she just started crying.”
Anita stood up, and with her eyes still closed, walked straight to the crib in the dark room. She brushed me aside and took the baby in her arms.
“Ahh… Ba-by… Ba-by… Mamma’s here… Ba-by,” she coochi-cooed. I stood back in jealous admiration.
And soon, Niyati was quite, sleeping like a baby… umm… Sleeping like a baby ought to sleep. I turned away and tucked myself back in bed, facing away from Anita.
Ah… How did I ever get myself into this..? I need more money. Cerelac, nappies, the baby will outgrow everything all the time, so that means constantly getting new clothes, and then sending her to school, and college, and oh shit, what if her future father-in-law asks for a large dowry? I’ll show that son of a…
I needed to slow down. One step at a time. I need more money. The channel needs greater audiences. Better advertisers. What if Sahni shuts me down? How am I going to feed her then? I won’t have the money to bribe him and buy Niyati her dolls.
I spent that night sleeping like a newborn baby’s stressed father is expected to sleep. Which is equivalent so saying that I didn’t sleep a blink.

But somehow, I seemed to be getting away with it.
Ring! went the phone the next morning, and I knew that there could only be one man calling me from a hidden number.
“Rajju Bhai…” I apologetically said before he shot me for not being apologetic enough.
“Yes, yes, heard you had a daughter Shanker?” came his mumbled voice out of a mouth full of paan masala.
“Yes, yes, I did,” I apologized for reproducing.
He paused and chewed for about half a minute. “Good, good,”
“Good,” I echoed him.
“Achha,” I heard him spit out his masala and return to me, “Theek hai, theek hai, okay, okay, good.”
I didn’t answer.
“Take care of your business then. Call me if you ever need any help, ok?” he said before hanging up. And just like that, he left my life forever.
Anita was right. My heart rate flirted with normality for the first time in years.
It was over. No more Rajju Bhai. No more protection fees. I remembered his house and the fear in Anita’s eyes. I remembered how I had begun to panic and made a fool out of myself.
I laughed. It was over. I ditched Arora and his bike and returned to my Maruti. Ramu was brought back into the kitchen, giving Anita more time to tend to Niyati.

Weeks passed, and Niyati cried a lot. The house had to be changed to fit the baby in. I had to move my movie collection out of the store room at home and into the BTV office. This one act turned out to be the precursor to me increasing the frequency of showing my adult rated Hollywood film collection on BTV. The ex-store room at home was transformed into a pink mess of baby stuff. Deepu Chachu began to visit regularly. Niyati cried a lot.
Months passed, and Anita made me buy a baby book. Its purpose was to record facts about the mundane things that Niyati got up to, but which were somehow newsworthy because she was doing them for the first time. The first time she sat up by herself. The first time she crawled. The first time she stood. The first time she shat her nappies. And all throughout, she cried a lot.
Years passed, and I began to show more and more Sahni-infuriating movies on the channel. He kept on threatening to censor and shut me down. I kept on promising him a bribe. Unfortunately for him, the bribe money was spent on other Niyati-related purchases, such as cribs, clothes, dolls, shoes, cartoons, and a nursery education.
And then one day, I realized that Niyati had stopped crying.
That was the only good news that day. Because, as the Niyati stress began to decline, Anita had started to feel felt the urge to reintroduce me to the bitch in her. The bitch that I had discovered just a few months after marriage. Of course, pregnant bitches are even worse than everyday, standard bitches. But, ever since Niyati was born, my wife had stopped being the crazy hormonal pregnant psychopath and had actually become a gentle, and dare I say, caring mother.
And now that our daughter was old enough to not lose sleep over anymore, the real Anita was back to pollute my life again.
And that day, the day Niyati stopped crying, we had our worst argument ever. I relieved my anger on her fat sister Bubble, reminding her of her stronger influence on the force of gravity. This didn’t make Anita too happy, so I left home to spend the evening in the gentler chaos of the office.
The same day, Sahni gave me a call.
“Oye, Shanker – Vinay Sahni here.”
“Yes?”
“How is work going?” he small-talked.
“Not too bad,” I said. If there was ever a day when I’d sell my soul to not talk to Sahni, it’d be today. “What do you want?”
There was a second’s silence on the other end of the line.
“I see you’re still showing disagreeable cinema.”
Disagreeable. I laughed to myself at the sound of that. Sahni was the type who heavily believed in the rightness and social correctness of language, just to make his point seem more positive than it actually was. Instead of malapropos words like ‘porn’, he would use ‘unpleasant’ or ‘disagreeable’. Instead of ‘death’, he used ‘demise’. And instead of ‘bribe’, Sahni liked to say ‘persuasion’.
“This can’t go on, Shanker. How are you going to persuade me to not shut you down?”
I thought about this for a while. It had many years of dodging and promising and ducking and false hopes. He had just caught me on a very, very wrong day.
“I’m not going to pay you,” I told him.
“What did you say?”
“I am not going to pay you.” I repeated in the same tone.
“You don’t want to play around with me Shanker,” Sahni threatened, “I will snap my fingers and BTV will be over.”
“Fuck you,” I mentioned in passing.
“What did you say?”
“Fuck…” I paused, “…You”
There was no sound from the other end for a few seconds. He then spoke back in what sounded like a mix of Hindi, Hebrew, and Gibberish, “Youiswearuuurhrhrhitsnoverwatchahhhhadeck”
I shut the call off and made the final turn to the office, smiling to myself with a nervous mix of comedy and fear. Atty was not going to be too pleased when she hears this…