Originally written on
17th August 1996
When the train pulled into Dadar station, it was running a bit late, almost 7pm on a Thursday evening. Crowds returning home refused to die down nor did the hot sultry weather give in. TOI’s weatherman had mentioned the monsoon was over Goa. Today’s sultriness told me that perhaps the monsoon was taking a siesta in Goa, getting drunk on feni and venacola to help glide herself to Bombay.
As the train weaved its way into the crowded platform,
grandmothers who had probably never heard of a vaulting horse, pelted
themselves onto the train. Seats were found quickly. “Thoda adjust kar na,”
I heard a woman request the girl sitting at the end of my seat. “It is meant
for three,” I wanted to scream as we all moved our hips in unison to
invisible music and adjusted our buttocks to make space for another. My
expanded rear end which before Dadar was relaxed, was suddenly squished
to the window.
As I looked out and the scent of Mahim Creek whizzed
by, voices grow louder as women started securing their places. “Aap khahan
uthare ho?” or “Jab aap utherga, muje seat dena,” or thoda andhar
jao na, tik se beto.” As the train gathered its fast mentality, speeding
towards Bandra and then onto longer distances beyond, I looked out of the
window, wondering how many times in life I had heard the phrase – “thoda adjust
karo.” How a hinglish sentence now so much a part of our lives, had been
created around a six-letter word called adjust – pronounced correctly with a stress
on the “d” so one really ends up saying “aDDjust.”
Think about it. We hear it every day. In every aspect of our
life. In every circle we cross.
It starts in the morning, the paper man needs his monthly
dues. You don’t have it. It’s an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning and today of
all days he chooses to remind you to pay him. As you open the door, you realise
he’s probably enjoying seeing your pear-shaped shadow through the fashion
street nightshirt. “Change nahi hein?” he asks – as you grapple sleepy
eyed searching every drawer and basket for the change he’s supposed to have.
But he is ready and gives you two pieces of cardboard: one with 10 rupees and the
other with 5 rupees written on it. “Iskai sat ugli bar adjust kar lenge,”
he says.
Now that you are up – you decide it’s probably best if you go
downstairs and buy the weekly veggies. Monday morning would be impossible, you
tell yourself as you have to go to the gym and then run to work. The sabzi
wallah has the same story. “Memsahib, change de do nah!” Again you desperately
search through your purse with too many pockets and all the unnecessary things
you keep reminding yourself to throw away – a photograph of the ex, petrol receipts, Jet Airways cologne napkins so old that the eau de
cologne has probably dried out and all those cardboard coins that the paperman,
milkman and others seem to use instead of change. I have to remind myself to
use these, you tell yourself as the sabzi wallah says in his Nasik accent, “memsahib
chutta nahi hein, ye loo, ek nimbu lo, yek rupee ke sat adjust karo.”
The train pulled into Andheri, two women from my row got
up and my rear took a deep breath. Suddenly as I relaxed and spread my buttock to
its full size, a young voice asked, “Excuse me could you adjust a bit, please?
She was newly married, you could tell. Probably punju, you told yourself,
seeing the tall thin girl-woman with her almost faded red plastic wedding
bangles. That must be her mother-in-law I thought, as they, one thin and the
other expanded tried to squeeze into a row meant for three.
As the train sped towards Borivali, I became the eavesdropper.
I so enjoyed these long and lonely trips home. “Anjali, you need to take off
these bangles. 45 days are over now bacha and it doesn’t look good. And why aren’t
you wearing sindhur? What will people say?” Anjali moved the hair on her face
and the bangles now pink from accompanying her to her bath with Liril slid up
and down. “Mummy it is so difficult,” she starts to cry. “He comes back from
work and puts on the TV to watch his cricket,” she says. As the conversation
progresses, I the detective gather that the couple is mother and daughter on
their way home for the first time after Anjali’s arranged marriage three months
ago.
It’s the usual story. He works in a bank in the city and
comes home late after his daily beer with pals probably at a seedy joint called
Blue Nile. On coming home, he wants her to be waiting, wet and ready in her
chiffon saree pretending to be Aishwarya as he inserts himself into her before asking
her to put on the TV so that he can watch his cricket and she can put herself
together and serve the food. Three months into the marriage and she did not
know more about him than she did the day she met him at Gaylords at Churchgate.
Her suburban Punjabi parents who came to Bombay many years ago to manage her uncle’s
basmati rice distribution company, were happy she was marrying a South Delhi Punjabi.
Her father had grown up in West Delhi, close to the Chandigarh highway and knew
what it meant for his daughter to marry the only son of Karol Bagh parents who recently moved to their new house in GK II. Once short-listed from their response to his ad, they had agreed also because he was exactly like his TOI matrimonial ad –
MBA, tall, living in Bombay alone in the Company flat earning a six-figure salary.
The mother had breathed a sigh of relief. She would not have to live with her in-laws and could make friends in the fancy colony in Versova. Her life will be better, Anjali’s mother had reminded herself as she remembered
her own early marriage days living in the joint family as the Choti Bahu. From
day one of walking up from her wedding night where she was asked to lift her
ten-kilo ghagra and lie back as he husband performed things her mother had
never told her about, she had to adjust to her new life. No longer was she the
youngest sister and daughter of a rich jeweller’s family. She was the Choti Bahu
– she cooked for all and ate last; went to the mandi with the servants to buy meat. She had never
bought meat before, but the new house had meat every day. As a young girl at
home, she had had considerable freedom on the big issues – her education, her
career choice of a teacher and her shy nod of her parents’ choice for her life
partner. But everything changed the day she walked around the fire seven
times as the rules that defined her life as a girl gave away to those prescribed
by Lord Manu. In her new home, guided by Laxman’s rekha, decisions on running the house, whether she could go for a movie, where her daughter studied was
decided by her husband, his eldest brother or her mother-in-law. And she
adjusted herself to those decisions as life was easier that way.
She wiped her tears as she remembered, pressing hard on her daughter’s
hand. “Things like this always happen, bacha. Thoda adjust karna padega, aur sab
teek ho ga,” as she spoke in tones that disguised the lies she spoke.
As Anjali’s mother went on to talk some sense into her daughter’s
head about the compromises of marriage, I wondered who heard it
more, women or men - “Life mein thoda aDDjusst karo, nah!”
